Foxymoron

Take me anywhere with you

EDIT: I fixed my html boo boo and the mp3 should be ready for download now. Sorry!

I haven't had much time to post in the past couple of days. Work has been busy and I have the flu. On top of all that, I'm moving to the newspaper's apartment tomorrow morning and have to pack everything up. I'm not good at packing.

Still, I wanted to share this photo with you. I took it on Sunday night coming home from dinner in Kowloon. This is the view from the mini-bus stand. I was listening to Feist's Monarch that night, as I have been all week. I think I may prefer this album to Let It Die front-to-back. It just seems more sincere, more gritty. My favourite is "Still True," which I think is the perfect complement to a city at nighttime. So, I give you my mp3 of the week/month/season: Feist's "Still True" from Monarch.

And for those of you already with the album, feel free to debate Monarch vs. Let It Die.

The download will only be available for a week or so.

Central Reservation

The day started out with a blank canvas. I only had plans to have lunch with my Godmother who is kindly keeping a watchful eye over me while I'm in Hong Kong. I don't know what my parents are telling their friends but I think they all feel sorry for me. No money, no friends. Poor Andrea. Anyway, it's not like they're lying about the money and friends, but there's not reason to feel bad for me, I made my bed and I'm quite comfortable lying in it.

We ended up eating dim sum at a restaurant in one of the fanciest malls in the city, Pacific Place (think Gucci, Prada, Lane Crawford). I was happy to eat some choi (leafy vegetables) because I've been neglecting fruits and vegetables and I missed them. Afterwards, I headed to Causeway Bay because I hadn't spent much time there. It's home to Hong Kong's Times Square and the busiest intersection in the world (according to Connie, but Google "busiest intersection in the world" and you'll get different answers). It took me a while to find Sugar St. where a colleague told me I could find a cool used bookstore. I never found it and it started to rain so I decided to go back to Central and my favourite coffee shop, Kosmos to drink their soy bean coffee and eat a cookie or something. Fortunately, that didn't happen...

Yellow space

The days are getting easier here. A lot of that has to do with my photography hobby re-born. Work is also settling down. The feedback on my writing has been really positive, surprisingly, and that of course, makes it easier to go to work. I'm not as scared to go report anymore.

There are still a number of things I need to get used to. Like interviewing in Cantonese and the language of daily news as opposed to feature writing. But the bottom line is I am learning. And for the first time in a long time, I feel really focused on my career. I may not have a thriving social life or a huge pay cheque but this is what I came here for. This is good.

Photo: I decided to experiment with my night exposure feature on the digicam today. I ended up with 50 narcissistic photographs and I covered most expressions from happy to sad to raising the roof. More on Flickr.

The different ways of seeing

I have this fantasy that a cool local will take me out, under his or her wing and show me The Real Hong Kong, their version of it anyway. I've seen the displaced ex-pat version of it. I want broken English and miscommunication; I want tea house restaurants barely clean enough; I want people who are just as curious about me as I am them and I will weave in and out of Cantonese, substituting English words for the Chinese ones I don't know. I'll tell them about indie rock music, they'll tell me who the biggest Cantopop stars are and which ones are pinned up on their wall.

I don't have this friend yet (or any for that matter) but things are looking better. Right now I'm content with my job, my books and my camera.

Photo: Taken on a the top of a double-decker bus on Hong Kong Island yesterday afternoon. Overexposed on Photoshop.

I saw the sign

This one goes out to Brian (because he loves Ace of Base).

A day in Central

I spent the day in Central, which is Hong Kong's financial hub and home to some of the best-looking skyscrapers in the world. It's also where you'll find Lam Kwai Fong, the city's entertainment district.

You can see more of my photos on my now active Flickr site. I'm obsessed!

(link fixed)

Saturday Night in Nowhere

On this Saturday night, I'm staying in and finding comfort in my iTunes. I found myself listening to Emm Gryner. The old stuff circa 1999/2000 (Science Fair) that I really loved: lo-fi and in my opinion, her more sincere and therefore better work. Now I'm giddy from the news of her up-coming LP of new original stuff titled The Great Lakes. Judging from what I've read, it's another DIY efford, in the same vein as Science Fair and includes longtime favourites never released ("Case of Tornadoes" and "Saturday Night in Nowhere"). I am very excited.

Emm is one of those artists I'll always have a special place for. I may not always love her work (as the case with her last three albums), but because I have fond memories of Ontario maple trees blurring outside the car window, Michigan living room shows, New York City and the great friends I've made in between, I have a positive association with her and her music. It comforts me and in a time like this, it's exactly what I need.

Emm's new CD is available for pre-order on her MySpace site only. I look forward to its arrival. In the meantime, I'll dream of another roadtrip with you and you and you and you and you.

I just signed up for MySpace mainly out of boredom. If you have an account, be my friend please!

This is where Dad lived

Wan Chai, Hong Kong: my father grew up across the street from the building on the left (top), a pawn shop he remembers from his childhood, way back in the 1950's. Kiddie corner from the shop is the same doorway he stepped through as a mischievious school boy everyday (bottom). And Thursday, as I waited for Moe to find me, I left my new umbrella, my Hong Kong typhoon protector and best friend, on the same corner my dad probably stole something from as a rotten kid. At least my real Hong Kong best friend gave me her umbrella. :)

Oink!

In today's Standard, you can find my article about how it's OK to eat pork in the Metro section. Because of the rise of Streptococcus suis in mainland China, a potentially fatal pig-borne disease, and Hong Kong's love for the other white meat, there are fears of an SS outbreak.

Of course, I don't eat Babe or any of his pink friends so I'm not too worried about my personal safety. In fact, I get the impression that Hong Kongers in general are sick of worrying about disease outbreaks. I still see the odd person wearing a mouth mask from time-to-time, but it seems the city has gotten over SARS -- not forgotten, but just moved on. It's like finally getting over your first painful breakup: it sucked, you learned from it and now you're moving forward.

This is where I live

If I look to the left whlie on my balcony, I see this, a my view of my building, Wong Chik Ting Hall. I'm living in this graduate student residence in St. John's College at the University of Hong Kong. It's a nice enough place with friendly staff and three stray kittens that live in the dumpster. If I look to my far right, I see the undergraduate hall filled with first-year undergrads. On Sunday, said undergrads disrupted my jetlagged 12 hour nap with cheering loud enough to make UWO's Frosh week embarassed. Chinese people may not be able to drink, but they sure can scream. I would have joined in but my limited Cantonese vocabulary doesn't go there.

An aside: now that we're on the topic of Frosh week at Western (my alma mater), let me point out that my former program, M.I.T. has not changed a single bit. The M.I.T. brand remains left-wing/military/hardcore in that hipster kind-of-way. Just look at Soph site, there's even a cool list, which no matter how (un)intentionally ironic, will still alienate the majority of frosh. Meh, I actually loved my program, being a soph and my time at Western. Perhaps I'm just bitter because all I got with this "website" welcome. I'm old. I have no idea who/what/where Aqua Teen Hunger Force is.